Vivek Gives Way to Haley as Neither Break Into Key Demographic Groups
Donald Trump slightly increased his lead in the 2024 Republican primary for president, according to the latest national survey conducted by BIG DATA POLL for October. The former president leads Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, 56.1% to 11.5% and 7.1%, respectively. That’s up from 55.8% to 12.3% and 11.4% in the previous national poll.
All other candidates remain in single digits, while 0.8% chose “someone else” and an increased 7.4% now say they are “undecided”. Of those “certain to vote”, President Trump leads Governor DeSantis by a larger margin, 58.8% to 12.2%. Among “New Likely Voters”, Trump leads overwhelmingly 62.3% to 8.7% for Nikki Haley.
Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, rose from 2.9% to 5.8% in October, though that’s just outside the sampling error. Most of the support fleeing Governor DeSantis since his high of 30.5% has moved to President Trump, but in October Haley pulled from him, Ramaswamy and Mike Pence. The former vice president fell roughly a point from 5.0% to 4.2%.
“Media love a horserace, but the truth is that this is the least competitive primary for a presidential nomination in modern memory,” BIG DATA POLL Director Rich Baris, said. “There is not one single demographic to which anyone could point indicating a lane opening for one of the president’s challengers.”
“In fact, the polling over the last few months has indicated nothing but lane closures for anyone not named Donald Trump.”
President Trump leads across all education demographics with majority support, to include 60.1% among those with a high school education or less, 56.1% among those with some college or 2-year degree, 55.6% among voters with a 4-year degree, and 50.1% with an advanced or postgraduate degree.
Evangelicals continue to back the former president over the governor of Florida by a wide margin, 59.5% to 10.6%, despite the latter’s attempt to court leaders in Iowa. White evangelicals nationally also only marginally better for the governor, who still trails overwhelmingly 58.4% to 11.3%.
By area, 58.7% of urban voters back President Trump, as do 51.3% of suburban voters and 63.0% of rural voters. By region, voters in the Northeast back the president with 56.7% of the vote; in the Midwest with 60.0%; in the South with 55.5%; and, 53.3% in the West.
Methodology
BIG DATA POLL interviewed 2,181 registered voters nationwide from October 6-8, 2023 via mixed-mode to include 2,086 likely voters screened by self-reported likelihood to vote and vote history. Interviews conducted online are sourced through Lucid (CINT) and phone interviews including P2P SMS and text-to-online are sourced from the Aristotle National Voter File Database. Likely primary voters were further screened for eligibility by registration and intent based on open and closed primary systems by state. Results were weighted for gender, age, race and ethnicity, education and income, geography and region. The overall sampling error is +/- 2.1% at a 95% confidence interval. The sampling errors for the Republican and Democratic Presidential Nominations are +/- 3.1% and +/- 3.1% at a 95% confidence interval, respectively. It is important to note that sampling errors for subgroups are higher. All BIG DATA POLL publicly conducted surveys are crowdfunded via the Public Polling Project, supplemented if necessary by BIG DATA POLL and are NOT funded by or affiliated with any candidate, campaign, committee, or political entity. Full and interactive crosstabs can be viewed on MarketSight.
